


Needs Must

by Miri1984



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post 177, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: Oscar has always treated certain things like a competition.
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 37
Kudos: 123





	Needs Must

It starts as soon as they get back. He helps Wilde get up and Wilde leans heavily on him, hand somehow warmer and heavier on Zolf’s shoulder than it’s ever been.

“Take it easy, Wilde,” he says softly. 

“Whatever you need, Zolf.”

Zolf blinks, looking up at him, eyes narrow, but there is nothing but relief and exhaustion in Wilde’s eyes, so he lets it pass.

Later, they’re sharing food with their saviours, and there is a touch on his hand. He looks up to Wilde, eyes crinkling, holding out the salt “Need anything?” He asks. It’s still a shock, looking at the changes in him, so that’s why it takes him a moment to register the words.

He snatches the salt from Wilde’s fingers, muttering thanks, still not certain if his surge of irritation is justified.

It’s the repairs on the ship that cement it for him. He is discussing logistics with Cel regarding the new summoned elementals and he looks up when he hears Wilde talking with Azu nearby. Wilde looks over, clears his throat. “Excuse me, Azu. I think Zolf needed me for something.”

Azu raises an eyebrow and Zolf’s jaw drops. “Wot?”

Wilde smiles. “Or didn’t you? Need me for something?”

He had been intending to give Carter and him a check over after he’d finished with Cel. “Not for a bit,” he says. “Why don’t you find Carter and tell him to meet us at the dock.”

It continues. For the entire time they’re getting the ship fixed. “Is this what you needed, Zolf?” “How can I fulfill your need, Mr Smith?” “Needs must, I suppose.” Zolf is fuming by day two but what can he say about it? “I don’t like your phrasing?” “I think you’re teasing me?”

He’s not even sure if Wilde remembers what was said when they were… wherever they were. Carter and the kobolds had been vague about it, not that Zolf had asked and he hasn’t had time to talk with Wilde yet. 

They haven’t had any time to talk for months, actually.

The best opportunity to talk had been while he was dead.

It’s early morning on the fourth day and Zolf emerges from their rooms thinking to go for a walk before the others are up. He doesn’t think, just wanders out, footsteps following a path that has become familiar. The city is quiet, although there are the regular creaks and groans of the bear’s movement (it doesn’t seem to sleep, or at least it doesn’t lie down to) and Zolf is uncomfortably reminded of the path he’d taken through Wilde’s… afterlife? Whatever that had been.

He’s not surprised, then, when he finds Wilde where he had been then, staring out over the slope of the bear’s flank, down into the landscape below. He looks up at Zolf’s approach, tilts his head, and says “Zolf! Did you ne…”

Zolf growls. “Stop it,” he says.

“Stop what?” 

“This. This thing you’re doing with the… thing. The word.”

Wilde’s grin turns puzzled. “Word?”

“Ever since you’ve come back. It’s all ‘do you need this, need that, need me,’ and I get it okay? You got me to tell you I needed you you don’t have to remind me of it every day, you win this one, you mean something to me and you get to hold it over for the rest of time but I don’t have to be reminded.”

He lurches to a halt, panting, fists clenched, to see Wilde’s mouth open. He braces. Waiting for the inevitable quip, the smug smile, the infuriating, beautiful twinkle in his eye.

But it doesn’t come. Zolf has a sudden, sinking feeling in his gut, certain that he’s been wrong.

“Wilde?”

“Zolf, I… ah…” he sees Wilde swallow.

Sees him look down at his hands.

Maybe Zolf’s been imagining it. He knows he can be oversensitive, especially when it comes to Wilde and his… habits. He’s just been offering help -

Zolf looks like he needs it and Zolf’s just misinterpreted it and made things weird the way he always does and… 

He feels cool hands take his and looks up to see Wilde looking down at him. Wilde tilts his head, then lets out a short huff of breath, and drops down to one knee. “You don’t have to manhandle me down to your level whenever you want to talk, you know,” he says. “You can always just ask.”

“Just asking anything of you turns into a fucking three act drama, Wilde.”

The laugh that he lets out is one Zolf has only heard a few times in their years together. Soft and self deprecating and… kind.

“It does, rather, doesn’t it,” he says. “I apologise for that.”

Zolf swallows. “Um, thanks?”

Wilde’s thumbs move slowly back and forth over the backs of Zolf’s hands. “And for everything, really.”

“Everything?”

“Maybe not everything but definitely the last few days.”

“You’ve been a real dick,” Zolf says. “I wasn’t even sure if you remembered what happened in there.”

“I don’t. Not all of it any way. It’s… fuzzy. But you telling me… what you told me. I remember that.”

Zolf should pull his hands away, back off. He’s got an apology now, and that should be enough. But he is still standing there, Wilde kneeling on the boards of the dock. His knee must be getting cold.

“It’s been a very long time for me, Zolf. A very long time since this was anything but a job.”

“This?”

He raises an eyebrow, squeezes his fingers over Zolf’s hands. “Whatever this is,” he says. “This… relationship. Am I allowed to use that word?”

Zolf shifts. Shrugs. “I guess it works?”

“All right then. It’s been a while since any relationship I’ve had has been anything but a job. Or a competition. And I forgot that, these last few days.”

“A competition?” Zolf does pull his hands away this time, and it makes Wilde look a little ridiculous, down on one knee in front of him.

“You can hardly blame me,” Wilde says, and his tone is petulant now. “It was like pulling teeth to get you to admit you wanted me to come back for you and not just…”

“I was trying to be fair,” Zolf said. “You had to come back for your own reasons not just because I wanted you to.”

“And you didn’t think for a second that one of the reasons I might want to was you?” Zolf blinked and Wilde swore. “No. Of course you fucking didn’t.” Wilde stands, and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“You’re saying if I hadn’t admitted that…”

Wilde waves a hand. “Gods I don’t know. Honestly I can’t think of anything worse than going back to Trinity but I got the feeling that was just a complex metaphor for our current situation. Well,” he considers for a second, “not that complex, really, in the end.” They stand in silence for a few moments, Wilde looking off and away again. Distant. The way he’d been before Japan. 

“There needed to be a choice,” Zolf says, finally. “They told us, before we went in there, that it wasn’t about our pain. It wasn’t something we could force. It was just something we could ask.”

Wilde sighs. “I can’t make an informed decision without all the information, Zolf.”

“How I felt… how I feel about you shouldn’t be the deciding factor on whether you want to come back to the end of the world, Wilde.”

“Maybe not,” Wilde says, “maybe not the deciding factor, no. But it should be a factor, nonetheless. You not telling me… that wasn’t fair.”

Zolf feels his chest tighten with something approaching anger. “What if it had pushed you to stay?”

Wilde’s expression crumples, at that. “Oh gods, Zolf,” he says. “After all this time, after everything we’ve… did you really think I didn’t care too?”

Zolf blinks. His eyes are blurred and he doesn’t want to admit why but the anger coiling in his gut has twisted into something entirely different and then… and then…

Wilde is there, back on his knees in front of him, smoothing his hair out of Zolf’s eyes and cupping his face in his hands and there are words “I’m sorry,” and “gods damn me for an idiot” and “you deserve better than me” and in between each phrase Oscar’s lips are on his cheek, his hands, his eyes and Oscar’s arms are around him and Zolf just is at this point he just exists in a space where Oscar Wilde, the most infuriating, obnoxious, irritating, wonderful asshole in the universe tells him that he is loved.

When he can form thoughts again Oscar is simply holding him, face tucked into Zolf’s neck, a heady, heavy weight in Zolf’s arms. He reaches up and tangles a hand in Oscar’s hair, pure white against the rough, browned skin of his fingers, and gently tugs Oscar’s head back so they can look at each other. 

“You’re still a dick,” he says, voice hoarse with tears, and Oscar laughs, and Oscar leans down, and Oscar kisses him.

  
  
  



End file.
